Innovations Festival: Printed, Hybrid, 3D, InMold, Textile Electronics

ACI Material’s Stretchable Electronics (SE) product portfolio offers a complete solution for durable wearable electronics. The products are printed on thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) films which can be bonded to fabrics. This results in devices that stretch without cracking and maintain excellent electrical properties satisfying the harsh demands of wearable electronics. Early to market stretchable conductors have a narrow scope of application due to limited stretchability without cracking. ACI’s product have a superior combination of electrical performance, resistance to fatigue during cyclic elongation, and excellent recovery. Examples of use in biometric sensors and fixed resistance heaters will be shown.

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Organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies have been steadily moving towards market-ready applications in the past decade due to rapid evolutions in materials discovery, device stack engineering and processing strategies. For instance, OPV technologies being tunable, flexible, and semi-transparent, are ideal candidates for photovoltaic modules for indoor energy harvesting and integration into buildings (BIPV). Materials innovation is at the forefront of the quest towards reaching better power conversion efficiency (PCE). While this innovation is mostly focused on reaching a higher efficiency level, the industry has challenges of its own in its materials selection. At Brilliant Matters, we believe that addressing industrial figures of merits, such as printability and synthetic sustainability, is key to enabling the lab-to fab transition.

The CondAlign anisotropic conductive film is an adhesive (ACF) that bonds electronic components at room temperature and low pressure. With mechanical properties like softness, flexibility and good adhesiveness, achieved by efficient use of the conductive particles, this product addresses a key challenge in the FHE area; how to attach components to flexible substrates at room temperature.

Finding sustainable alternative conductive materials to silver is growing in demand. Copper is the next best conductive material, extremely abundant and much cheaper compared to silver and thus is a prime candidate moving forward. DTI has developed several micro and nano copper particles and has demonstrated industrial production of up to 10 kg per day. This talk will showcase the reactor technology DTI has developed, consisting of both a material synthesis reactor as well as filtration system, for automated production of micro/nanomaterials, for printed electronic application, as well as preliminary results for copper based inks produced using produced particles.

DuPont™ GreenTape™ 9KC Low-Temperature Co-fire Ceramic (LTCC) tape and silver (Ag) metallization was used to fabricate an antenna-in-package (AiP) radio frequency front end (RFFE) module operating at 28 GHz. DuPont collaborated with ITRI in Taiwan to design, fabricate, and test this AiP RFFE module which utilizes a Anokiwave phasor chipset and a 2x4 patch antenna array that gives >18 dBm Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) while steering the radiated beam over ±35° with <1 ppm error vector magnitude (EVM) under 64 QAM modulation. This reference design is analogous to many use cases for 5G telecommunication deployment such as small cells and mmWave base stations where LTCC is a excellent material platform due to high reliability, superior thermal performance, and stable material performance at high frequency over all practical ambient conditions.

Continued advances in the Flexible and Formable Electronics is driving the material suppliers such as DuPont Teijin Films to provide functionality to meet wide ranging demands for applications such as displays, TFT backplanes, energy harvesting and storage, sensors and Human Machine Interfaces.

This talk will give a brief overview of DTF’s PET and PEN product range meeting wide ranging application needs.

Thereby the focus will be on the recent progress made with the development of PEN substrates for extreme processing requirements, formable PETfilms for in-mold electronics, films with ultra clean and smooth surfaces for ultra barrier and high resolution structures and combining UV absorption, weather resistance or fire retardancy whilst also offering more sustainable solutions with the incorporation of recycled materials in the substrates.

DTF has launched many films through collaborations with partners in the flexible electronic industry as our organisation is proving to be uniquely capable of offering customised and affordable polyester substrate solutions.

Printed electronics are increasingly relevant to the large-scale industrialization and commer- cialization of integrated sensors and functionalities. To equip high-value components with printed sensors medium lot sizes, direct printing of functionalities onto a semi-finished or finished component is the most automatable approach to manufacturing. However, the thermal post-treatment of printed layers is often not possible or can only be achieved with compromises using conventional oven processes, either for reasons of energy and thus cost efficiency, com- ponent size, loss of mechanical properties or insufficient thermal load capacity of the compo- nents used.

The use of laser radiation for thermal post-treatment of printed functionalities offers ad- vantages in these application scenarios. Due to the local heat input, sensors printed directly on components can be selectively and quickly post treated. On the one hand, this saves energy in production and thus costs. On the other hand, it enables the automation of the entire sensor production directly on a component or a semi-finished product on a machine tool or production

Further advantages are the significantly shorter processing times of laser processing com- pared to oven processes as well as the complete 3D compatibility of the process.

We will present the possibilities and advantages of combined printing and laser processes for manufacturing embedded sensors. We will show how these technologies can be combined with other manufacturing processes to open up new possibilities for the production of component-connected functionalities.

As stretchable inks improve, the possibility of a fully stretchable medical device is realized with silicone-based stretchable inks utilizing AgCl filler for medical electrodes

Henkel is an industry-leading supplier of printed electronics materials and services. The broad Loctite portfolio of functional inks includes silver inks, carbon inks, silver/ silver chloride inks, dielectric inks, and other non-conductive inks as well. Due to Henkel’s extensive partnership network, we are uniquely situated to provide high-quality materials for a variety of printed electronics applications. Combining the trend of 3D electronics and increased connectivity, we recently developed a range of silver inks for pad-printing. This ink range enables the direct 3D-printing of 5G antenna on the smartphone frame.

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What happens currently at InnovationLab? Insights into what iL’s R&D department researches on regarding hybrid and flexible electronics, along with interim results and next steps. This will be accompanied by the one or other novel development

Imprint lithography is a versatile technology for the replication of micro- and nanostructures. It is widely used in high-tech areas such as optics, electronics, photovoltaics, sensor technology, in the medical field ("lab-on-chip") or in surface finishing.
As a European pioneer, JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH operates a roll2roll (R2R) UV coating and imprinting system since 2010 and is developing and using resins that are biodegradable and thus sustainable. Required structures can be produced on a meter-per-minute scale, similar to newspaper printing. With a strong focus on the product, processes are developed and optimized for:
(i) Environmentally friendly production of high-resolution conductive structural elements for organic electronics (fine conductor paths, nanoscale electrodes for organic transistors)
(ii) Precise production of optical 2.5D structures for the management of light in films (coupling and decoupling, light conduction) for applications in photonics
(iii) Large-scale realization of 3D-structured bionic surfaces and complex nanostructures that make effects from nature technically usable (shark skin, lotus effect, gecko effect, structural colors)
(iv) Cost-effective production of complex microfluidic elements in foil as the basis of biosensors for lab-on-foil analysis systems
(v) Continuous production of refined high-tech film surfaces for packaging, decoration, security and labelling, which have improved optical, mechanical and chemical properties due to micro- and nanostructure

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VersaNote, the world’s first ultra-flexible and rugged writing display that mimics the feel, flexibility, portability and analog writing of paper will be discussed. A fully automated roll to finished part line was designed for the mass production of VersaNote including display production, interconnect to PCB, and encapsulation. Kent Displays, Inc. currently offers its expertise and capabilities in cleanroom based roll-to-part production through its contract manufacturing business unit to others interested in making revolutionary, flexible electronic devices.

We examined to utilize the gravure offset printing method to print high-precision micro bumps with various pastes.
For the flux paste, the precision of the printing position was ±5 μm on a 300 mm wafer.
We have also tried to print and reflow the solder paste.
Printing and reflow have been successful with minimum diameter of 6 μm and 15 μm, respectively.
We will report the details on the day.

Transparent conductive coatings are widely used as transparent conductive electrodes in displays, touch screens, solar cells, antenna structures etc., and require a low sheet resistance combined with a high transmission. For wearable electronics and bendable displays, a flexibility of the electrode material is also required. Electrospinning was used as a facile method to produce very long and thin fibers, and in combination with silver, conductivity was introduced.
The properties of silver (Ag) nanoparticle-containing inks and coatings thereof, applied by electrospinning on PET and PC foil substrates were studied. The tested Ag nanoparticle-containing inks consisted of a commercial nanoparticulate silver ink and a polymeric binder in a suitable solvent. The electrospun fibers were fabricated using different spinning conditions and were then silver plated in an electroless process. The resulting coatings have been characterized with respect to their sheet resistance, transmission, and haze.
It was observed that with the electrospun polymer silver fibers, fibers with a diameter of about 1 to 3 µm and lengths of several cm could be obtained, ensuring a high percolation. By variation of the number and the diameter of the fibers, the conductivity and the optical properties could be improved, and coatings with a sheet resistance below 5 Ω/sq were obtained, showing a high transmission of up to 92 % and a low haze below 2 %.
The achieved sheet resistances in combination with the relatively high transmission are comparable to those of other transparent conductive coatings that are state of the art and available on the market, such as ITO coatings. In addition, the coatings produced by this electrospinning process are flexible and stretchable, which offers interesting new applications for wearable electronics and 3D-formable displays, for example. Other advantages of these coatings are the low-cost process for their production and the possibility of upscaling by a roll-to-roll process.

Metal Gel fluid-phase circuits and strain sensors present a unique solution for developing wearable 3D physiological monitors with highly stretchable, thin, and comfortable wiring that makes electronics seamless and invisible when embedded in a garment. In addition to detecting 3D body motion, Liquid Wire circuits can host any technology that a traditional PCB can. But unlike conventional flex circuitry, the Metal Gel conductor stretches with the body’s movements and reflows back into place without harming device performance even after 30,000+ strain cycles. This presentation will explore the underlying technology of pliable Metal Gel circuits and sensors so thin and stretchable they’re hardly noticeable to the wearer.

Meta Materials Inc. is developing discrete platform specific proprietary technologies for large-surface-area lithography, allowing the manufacture of nanostructures to be carried out in a cost-effective manner. Each platform employs a massively parallel patterning scheme, designed to be scalable to large areas of either rigid substrate materials and rolls of flexible films. In certain cases we use a phase-shift mask approach and in others, cast plasmonic printing – all allowing the creation of structures with feature sizes down to 50 nm.

Flexible electrically and thermally conductive adhesive systems are mostly heat curing adhesives which
have a given flexibility after curing. They are perfectly designed for flexible(in-molded) electronics, for
example in the field of wearable stretchable electronics and thin-film solar cells.

Printed electronics manufacturers are continually developing new use cases using Panasonic BEYOLEX film. This unique thermoset substrate is very soft, has high temperature resistance and almost zero permanent deformation after strain. This talk will briefly highlight several examples of PE devices made with this new

Many prototypes have been developed in the flexible hybrid electronic space that do not go to production due to poor longevity of the final design. One of the big challenges remains how to connect conventional component to a flexible architecture, while maintaining the expected longevity in the circuit. Anisotropic conductors are the current benchmarks for these devices, but their performance is lacking as compared to standard soldering processes. PulseForge has devised a new photonic soldering process that enables attachment using standard solder pastes onto components and substrates that cannot withstand the oven reflow temperatures.
Photonic soldering utilizes high intensity flashes of visible light to achieve wide area heating with exceptional uniformity. Solder paste is heated to its liquidous temperature using radiative energy transfer, and light is converted to heat through optical absorption. This process is selective by exploiting selective absorptivity of active regions or with the aid of shadow masks. The optical flash can be modulated digitally, with high temporal resolution, to enable highly customizable temperature profiles, ranging from traditional to highly innovative.
Photonic soldering is compatible with standard high temperature lead free solder alloys (e.g. SAC305) in combination with temperature-sensitive substrates (e.g. PET). The nonequilibrium nature of the heating process enables thermal isolation of active regions from temperature sensitive regions. The resulting flexibility in material selection gives designers significant freedom and unconventional options in device architectures. The innovative approach enables a production flow that better lines up with the next generation of electronics. This presentation highlights the advantages of the new technology and discusses the application space for the photonic soldering technology.

Quad Industries is a printed electronics solution provider that delivers value through exceptional print, assembly and converting skills. We enable innovation, growth and customer success through long term partnerships!

By means of highly accurate screen-printing, we integrate smart functionality on a wide range of flexible and stretchable films. This presentation focuses on technology and application developments in the domain of medical electrode patches.

We are going to show a prototype made by Seristampa with an IMD surface joint to a capacitive foil (printed with stretchable conductive inks) assembled on an electromechanical device, giving mechanical feedback under your finger once you press the touch surface.

In a rapidly changing world where our realities are no longer distinct from virtuality, we look at how SmartKem can deliver the next generation of displays that will help facilitate this new metaverse. Through its disruptive TRUFLEX® semiconductor platform, SmartKem can produce backplanes using its low-temperature production process to enable the real world to engage with the virtual.

Recently, in-mold electronics (IME) gained a lot of attention, mainly due to the promise of thinner and light weight parts and less complex assembly process. Advances in 3D formable and injection moldable electronic materials are enabling IME applications to emerge and there are already multiple user cases demonstrating the applicability of IME for automotive interiors, appliances, consumer electronics, industrial controls, deicing lenses, heaters and other applications. Learn how Sun Chemical has leveraged its long-time expertise in in-mold decoration ink technologies to develop best in class in-mold electronic inks that will enable electronics manufacturers to create innovative products.

3D printing has been historically relegated to fabricating conceptual models and prototypes; however, increasingly, research is now focusing on fabricating functional end-use products. As patents for 3D printing expire, new low-cost desktop systems are being adopted more widely and this trend is leading to a diversity of new products, processes and available materials. However, currently the technology is generally confined to fabricating single material static structures. For additively manufactured products to be economically meaningful, additional functionalities are required to be incorporated in terms of electronic, electromechanical, electromagnetic, thermodynamic, chemical and optical content. By interrupting the 3D printing and employing complementary manufacturing processes, additional functional content can be included in mass-customized structures. This presentation will review work in multi-process 3D printing for creating structures with consumer-anatomy-specific wearable electronics, electromechanical actuation, electromagnetics, propulsion, embedded sensors in soft tooling and including metal and ceramic structures.

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Keith Morton, Ynvisible's VP of Sales & Marketing, will speak about established and new applications that are benefiting from their printed, ultra-low-power, and cost-effective e-paper technology.

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